The war continues, if you can call the occasional “sight the enemy in local” a war. We did give friend Eidelon a chance to launch his drones today, but not enough time to achieve target lock. And we made a HUGE salvage haul thanks to him, so we’re buying his after-action Quafe.

It all happened like this. I was sitting in a station helping corpmate Jim Bridger refit his destroyer. He was feeling some power pain, so I rummaged up a rig from the corporate stash for him. Alas, he was short on a rigging skill, so I sent him to the nearest school to, well, get schooled.

But of course, there’s a war on, so we check local first. Yup, Eidelon is lurking. No worries Jim, just be alert.

Jim undocks. Sure enough, Eidelon is camping us. Jim warps away just as the drones pop out. He is not targeted, nor is he followed. His is, presumably, not the corpse Eidelon is being paid to obtain.

Me, I think it would be fun to have a little friend watch Eidelon for awhile, somebody he can’t currently shoot at. It just so happens I have a little friend parked a few jumps away, so I logged out, logged in my little friend, and started jumping back.

And on my way back…

My little friend. Anonymous character in an anonymous corp. Less than a million skillpoints. In a disposable frigate. And what to my wondering eye should appear, but about a half dozen battleships slugging it out at a jumpgate?

I sit at the jumpgate at zero meters, watching the slide show. It’s a busy system, there are at least ten ships involved in close combat around me, and at least thirty drones. My frame rate is, shall we say, teh suck.

Boom. Somebody goes boom. With a big boom. Did I mention the boom?

Click wreck in overview. It’s in range. Open wreck. First item: “True Sansha….” I stop reading, after that it’s a mass of Tech II icons. Grab grab grab! I think I sprained my mousing wrist I was grabbing so fast.

Dragging complete. Can we get a screen update please? I’d really like to jump out now.

One dead Minmitar, two dead Minmitars, three dead Minmitars, four dead Minmitars, five dead Minmitars, six dead Minmitars, any second now guys, you can update my screen, show me the empty wreck, let me jump!

I suppose, before getting into details, it’s time to lay out the Ironfleet war philosophy. Y’see, we’re not combat pilots. Sure, we keep a heavy rocket wrench behind the pilot seat for when things get out of hand, but we’re not out there every day drooling for the big kaboomski.

War is expensive. War is (mildly) stressful. War is bad for business. War is (as compared to scooping up goodies) unprofitable.

It follows from this that the best way to win a war is to be boring and wait for it to go away. Park the most expensive ships, jump into the cheap-implants clone, pull out the disposable salvage frigates, move around a lot (we do this anyway), and above all, don’t provide any sport or excitement for the folks who declared war. This is a game, and it takes two to tango. Unless they have an astoundingly deep grudge or are astonishingly well paid, they’ll eventually stop paying a war bill that’s neither hurting us nor giving them any fun.

The surest way to keep a war going is to give the enemy serious combat. Either he wins, and is encouraged to continue; or he loses, and develops a grudge. There is room for harassing raids — just enough missiles from extreme range to keep him on his toes, that sort of thing — but giving serious fight tends to extend the war unless you’ve got the resources to achieve consistent crushing victories.

My EVE experience has so far been very consistent. Every now and then somebody will take offense at our salvage behavior. Sometimes, even often, they will threaten war. Most of these threats are hollow. A few are real, but there’s no way to tell which is which. So, as a matter of corporate policy, we ignore war threats and send polite refusals to “Pay us $XXX or we’ll declare war.” If Ironfleet had a battleship and a pilot for every empty war threat we’ve gotten, we could take out the entire BOB alliance in a single zergling rush.

Real war declarations tend to be unannounced. And usually come from a corporation only loosely associated, if at all, with the industrial corporation (fat with miners and haulers and mission runners) who were aggrieved by the Ironfleet Way.

Which brings us to the current war declaration:

2007.04.08 20:35
I.T.G. has declared war on Ironfleet Towing And Salvage.
After 24 hours fighting can legally occur between those involved.

Mercenaries, perhaps; it even seems likely. Email inquiring about war aims is not answered; that’s not surprising, but sometimes you get lucky.

Let’s see, five members in the corporation, so it’s “A Boy And His Alts” in all likelihood, possibly with a spouse or a child thrown in (“family business”) or a real life friend or two. CEO and Founder is one Eidelon, what’s his history?

Uh, oh, this could get ugly. June 21st, 2003? Two thousand and three? How many skill points can you get in four years? He’ll have expensive ships and the skills to fit them for devastating effect, and he’s not going to fall for any of the usual sucker traps. Plus, he can be expected to have a wealth of alts, contacts, friends, bookmarks, safe spots, and exotic personal weapons stowed in uniquely intimate places.

Eidelon, Eidelon, why does that name ring a bell? Names have power, when you know a man’s self-chosen name you know who he thinks he is. Google, oh my fair Google, do your stuff!

Eidelon, Eidelon, ah, here it is:

Eidelons are a fictional humanoid species from the Farscape universe.

The Eidelons were a pacifist race who inhabited the planet Arnessk 12,000 cycles before the Farscape storyline takes place. They possess a unique ability tied to their physiology. They have a very special gland that vibrates to create an energy field that “has a calming effect on individuals, allowing them to see reason”. Using this empathic ability, the ancient Eidelons could convince a foe to follow a peaceful path to their objectives.

Pacifist? That doesn’t sound too frightening. And there are hints of carebearism to be found, too, if you look. The bio says only “Too much charisma…”, a problem I have myself and one which makes training ship skills a bit of an ordeal. But four years is time enough, regardless. Some of the employment history hints at an industrial and trade past, too: Corporate names like “Blueprint Haus”, “Carbide Industries”, and “Commodity Analytics, Ltd.”

But the the thing to remember about carebears (which, by the dominant Eve view, I am one of) is that they are still bears. And bears have teeth.

What else can we find out? Not so many forum posts has this Eidelon, but they are personally somewhat revealing. He has, like many of us, sometimes been frustrated by the game’s technical issues and the way they are handled by CCP. He has ranted insultingly, he has tried the old “let’s put pressure on these people by emailing their bosses” routine, which is a pretty serious asshole maneuver as you’ll know if anybody’s ever done it to you in your office; but he has also posted reasonably respectful (and not IMO entirely unmerited) criticism of CCP’s technical processes, while (now we are getting somewhere!) identifying himself as “In RL [Real Life], an I.T. Manager.”

But those are all ancient posts, what’s going on with Eidelon lately? Finally, a nugget of information from the recruitment channel, about a year ago. The bear’s teeth were starting to itch:

Tired of being good. Would be interested in a merc outfit with older players operating mostly in Empire. 30m sp and some PvP experience and happy to learn more. Huge RL commitments, so preferably a UK-based corp that’s geared for middle-aged on/off players like me!

Hmm, tends to confirm my mercenary suspicion. 30 million skill points, a year ago? I’ve accumulated half that total, in about exactly a year, but he started out with too much charisma in an era of lesser implants and fewer learning skills. By now, he’s presumably got more of both than I do, so we should expect at least 45 million skill points currently. Thrice mine, a nice round number, and a man I don’t want to dogfight with unless the tonnage is heavily stacked in my favor.

OK, he’s in the UK with “Huge RL commitments”, so I can’t expect him to be on a great deal, and (if he’s still employed as an I.T. manager on a normal day shift) his hours will be somewhat predictable, and not likely to coincide with at least my evening playtime.

Well, now we know a lot more than we knew before, don’t we kiddies? I do so love the internet.

Brass tacks time. Enough talk and research, what’s happened so far?

Before the war ever started, Eidelon prepositioned himself in a system I frequent. When the war went live yesterday, he logged in for awhile, and was visible in local. However, I never saw him near my undisclosed location, and he had nothing to say in local. All in all, it was the most peaceful “first day of war” I’ve ever enjoyed.

Today, the routine repeated itself. He logged in quietly and left me undisturbed, to carry on my Ironfleet business in my undisclosed location. But, after some while, I decided to see if he was a literary man. Do British people, I wondered, read American poets like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?

Whether they do or not, every American schoolboy must, at least to the extent of Paul Revere’s Ride. Which seemed oddly appropriate to me, being oh-so-gently dogged by a Redcoat and all, so I misquoted into local a poor-remembered attempt at a quote:

Marlenus > “One if by land, and two if by sea. And I, on the opposite shore, will see, and send the word, to spread the alarm…”

Imagine my gratification to hear in return:

Eidelon > “A cry of defiance and not of fear…” :-)

Proving not only that Brits do study their Longfellow, but study it better than I do, because I had to Google the poem to confirm that well-chosen reply is, as I thought I remembered, from the last verse of the poem.

(Oh, aye, perhaps he Googled it as well, but if he did in the time he had, he grasped it quickly and thoroughly, understood why I chose it, read it through to the end, and chose an apt verse to quote back at me. That’s literary reparte in the 21st Century, folks, and it’s every bit as much fun as the steam-era version that relied solely on human memory and wit.)

I confess, somewhat against my better judgment, to being impressed.

And so the battle is begun, with an exchange of apt quotation demonstrating that we know who we are and what we are doing. I must say, this has been as auspicious a beginning of a war as Ironfleet has seen. Where will it end? Original sonnets at knifefight ranges? Who can say?

Shortly thereafter, Eidelon left the system and logged off. I sent him an Evemail, an entire verse:

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

Whew! I had an exciting day today, and really had to work for a jetcan full of pyroxeres. I swear, it might have been easier to mine this one myself!

But, much less fun.

So let’s see, I was scouting my local system when I noticed two covetors mining in close formation. One was in a corp and one was in an NPC corp, but there was something about their alignment that made me think they were together. I bookmarked both their cans, and returned to my hangar for my trusty Crane transport ship.

Warp to zero on one of the cans. Scoop a load of ore. Can is not empty, so I dump the rest into an Ironfleet jetcan. This covetor is not flying drones, and he offers no fight. I go home and deposit my salvaged ore, return for more.

Still here, still mining. I scoop another load, this can is almost empty.

Right about then the other covetor — the one in the player corp — begins to target me. Huh? You can’t shoot me. But he is flying five drones, maybe he thinks he’s threatening me to warn me off. Well, buddy, that’s not how I work.

So I zip over with an eye toward emptying that other can into an Ironfleet jetcan. Which I do. This one is almost full of pyrox, lots of loads for the Crane.

Of course, no sooner do I swap the ore than the covetor starts chewing on me with five drones. About this time, the other covetor leaves. Uh oh, this could get ugly if he comes back with a big stick.

So I align for warp and then crank up my one missile launcher on the covetor. This will be a test of tanks, his drones are doing fair damage and so are my heavy missiles. But I pull ahead quickly, this should go OK.

Once the warping is underway, I take time to see that Covetor Pilot #1 has returned in a battleship. And he looks pissed. No way to waggle my wings in a Crane (no wings) but I exit with all possible panache. The armor looks like it’s going to need some serious plates welded over the new holes.

So what am I leaving behind? Blinky battleship, blinky covetor with half his armor gone, most of a jetcan full of ore with an Ironfleet tag on it. Hmmm.

What have I got in my hangar that can deal with a blinky battleship?

Hmmm, nothing at the moment.

Hmmm.

But hey, the battleship can’t haul that ore, now can he?

Time to dust off the stealth bomber.

Fast forward ten minutes. I’m hanging in the belt, cloaked, watching my two Ironfleet cans and the drones one of the covetors left behind. Nobody here but us chickens.

Here comes blinky battleship. He sniffs around, does nothing.

Here comes Covetor Pilot #2, now flying a blinky Drake battlecruiser. Another target I don’t feel like spamming with cruise missiles, because what would it prove?

Blinky battleship and blinky Drake hang around. Blinky Drake collects the drones. Blinky battleship eventually stops blinking, because time is up. But blinky Drake? Ah, he’s going for the Ironfleet cans. I watch while he flips them into his own cans. Now he’ll be flashing another fifteen minutes.

He hangs around a bit more. Then he leaves.

Will he come back in something large and thin-skinned and crunchy, with a creamy center? Will he?

He does! With a long elegant slide, a flashing indy warps back into the belt and directly to the ore can. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for!

“Wake up, you gunnery dogs!” (Working for Ironfleet, the gun dogs don’t get much practice, except at playing poker in the ready room.) “Wake up, I say! Look lively, and man the missile tubes!”

So I uncloak, target, launch the first volley of cruises. I can’t kill a Badger in one volley, but unless he’s very alert, I ought to get more than one volley. With any luck, he’ll get hung up on the can or something. One away! Two away! Three away!

Kaboom. Kaboom. Kaboom.

Damn.

For the first time ever in my salvage career, I meet somebody ELSE who flies Tech II transports in high sec. I’m not shooting at a badger-class indy, I’m shooting at a Bustard. Those babies are tough. At this rate it will take ten volleys to get through his shields alone, and I won’t get ten. On the bright side, he can’t have a gun on that lumbering beast, it ain’t possible.

In the event, I get four volleys, and take down about half his shields, at which point he warps away.

But right at that very moment, something much more exciting begins to happen, which utterly replaces my mild disappointment.

Remember Covetor Pilot #1? Who is still hanging around in a battleship? He’s long since lost the right to shoot at me, so why is he targeting me?

Did I say “targeting”? Forget the targetting, why is he shooting me?!?

Ouch ouch ouch, I’m in a ship made out of origami tissue paper!

Make that “Half a ship”, after the first volley.

Did I say “Emergency Warp!” already? No, but the guys in the black gang got the idea when holes the size of pumpkins (big ones) began appearing in the engine room bulkheads. They must have decided to hit the big red button without waiting to hear from their astonished captain.

I’m not sure I would have made warp before the second volley landed, but by the time I actually did make warp, Concord had arrived, blinky battleship was a smoking wreck, and Covetor Pilot #1 was sitting beside said wreck in his pod, contemplating the smoldering consequences of his anger management problem.

After that, there was no more excitement. Somebody beat me to the battleship loot, but I got the salvage from the wreck. And I had to pull out a Badger to haul all the ore home, which took about three trips. But my combative covetor pilots never returned for it, so it was an uneventful haul.

I spend quite a lot of time probing for derelict ships from the days when folks routinely left them in “safe” spots. Found one today that was an ancient hulk indeed: A plain Badger with two Cold-Gas I Arcjet thrusters fitted, drifting cold and aimless through space more than 40AU from the nearest celestial object.

It’s been some years since they added the “only one afterburner active per ship” rule, so I suspect this Badger’s been drifting, abandoned, that whole time. Sadly, other than the afterburners (which are still valuable, being best named) the ship was unfitted and bereft of cargo.

As I’ve posted in various places, Ironfleet is and will always be a small corporation. I formed it to give a leg up to a real life friend of mine, his son, and a crew of his son’s friends, who got enticed (by me) into EVE after we’d all been gaming together for years. Most of these folks have gone on to bigger and better things in Eve, finding the salvage life to be variously, too exciting (not enough mission running you see) or not exciting enough (not enough PvP). But they’ve all stayed loyal, which is handy when we get one of our rare war declarations because they can come back and help spread the lesson that Marlenus in his “helpless badger” is not the only corporate military asset.

(Ok, truth in advertising requires me to admit that “help spread the lesson” sometimes translates to “provide more targets for our enemies to camp in station while we all play Battlefield II on the dedicated in-house twitch-gaming network.” Ironfleet is not a combat corporation and we have a rigid policy against making wardecs against us profitable or fun. It’s very handy to have young members with PvP enthusiasm, but we are careful to avoid ever giving good sport. The best way to “win” a war when you’re in the salvage business is for your enemy to grow bored and go away.)

I am uninterested in expanding Ironfleet, because Ironfleet is all about accumulating stuff, and the game frankly sucks at providing convenient tools for managing corporate security. Too much hassle, I’m not interested. So, as I’ve posted before, nobody gets into Ironfleet unless I know them in real life and can “get my fingers around their neck” if they screw me.

That’s at once deadly serious (because I’m not kidding about the inflexibility of the policy) and hilariously funny. The funny part comes in because of who I am, who my friends are, and the complete and utter implausibility that there’d ever be violence between us because of a computer game.

This moment of reflection was prompted by a forum post that reminded me that other folks really are a bit more direct in their interpersonal relationships. This is sad and funny at the same time. Zwerg from October Snow writes:

So tonight I was flying around in my souped-up Heron, probing for goodies. The directional scanner showed an interesting assemblage of ships and wrecks in the vicinity of the local sun, so I dropped an exploration probe and patiently waited for the results.

What I got was, of all things, a hit on a covetor mining barge, off the ecliptic and well away from any roid belt.

Interesting! In a change from my usual tactics, I decided to take a Badger II, just in case there were any complacent cans of ore laying about.

Once inside the deadspace, I found a used-up mission and a Caracal, an Apocalypse battleship funning eight lasers, a Covetor, and (alas) an Iteron V. The mining op appeared to be low end minerals from the mission roids. Jet cans were out, but they were well served by the indy, and were mostly empty. However, by sitting near the cans for several minutes, I was able to assemble most of a Badger load of ore. These miners were not, shall we say, paying great attention. I warped away without ever seeing any sign that my presence was noticed.

Not exciting, not very profitable, but it’s the first time I ever salvaged ore from a mission deadspace. (We won’t talk about the Bustard-load of Omber I took from an exploration roid complex once….)

Hello, my name is Emma Gunwin. First day in Ironfleet was uneventful. Spent most of my time training skills and helping with loot clean up for buddies doing level four missions.

Day two started me off doing more of my Ironfleet duties, such as removing navigational hazards in my brand new, freshly waxed Iteron. You would be suprised at what nasty suprises people leaving in these navigational hazards. I found a Large Secure Can with hundred and six Flameburst missles tucked away in it. By my calculations, if someone had hit that LSC before I had gotten to it and set off those missiles, it would have caused a sizable thermal explosion capible of doing 7950 damage. Good thing I got it before that could have happend.

The crew did an amazing job getting the cans in the cargo hold quickly, especially while being under fire from local priates. Good thing the Gallente know how to make a Iteron right or someone might have had to pick us off the nearest asteroid with stick and a spoon. Despite the danger we cleaned up more then eight navigational hazords that day and made space a safer place.

It’s no secret I do a lot of belt salvage in my Crane transport. She’s tough and fast, has a cargo hold big enough for many jobs, and the one heavy missile is enough to give an unpleasant surprise to many of the miners who think they’ll pop themselves a “helpless badger”.

So today I went for my daily belt sweep, and found a bunch of plagioclase floating in the vicinity of a Covetor. And that’s the Crane’s big weakness — as haulers go, the hold size is minimal.

So I grabbed what I could and stuffed the rest into an Ironfleet can. Haul to station, empty, undock, return.

Blink, blink, blink, here’s a new party heard from! An Iteron V is flashing red, and the Ironfleet can is missing. Well, we can’t have that, can we? It’s lock and rock time.

Dang. Not sure I ever shot an Itty V before, but it takes a long time to chew one up with one missile launcher.

About half way through the chewing, the guy in the Covetor decides to come to the Iteron’s rescue. His three Vespa I drones began chewing on me.

So picture this, folks! It’s a slow motion dogfight at knife fight ranges, since I warped to zero and everybody’s moving at Iteron V speeds. Two haulers and a mining barge, plus three drones. The world’s biggest slowest furball.

Eventually the Iteron goes *pop*. Loot? Would you believe I got one Cargo Expander II (yes!) and one Civilian Shield Booster? (What the fuck?)

I avoid lag, I try to be careful, and I’m pretty willing to accept losses imposed by an imperfect gaming environment. So, in about a year of play, I’ve never felt the need to petition.

So, today. Saw a full can of ore. Went to haul some. Hauled some. Went back. Hauled some more. Docked.

Looked at local. Whoa, smack city!

﻿LordThyGod > fuck you
﻿Takeda Shiko > Uh?
﻿LordThyGod > Martelenus is stealing ym ore byt the transprt full!@
﻿Takeda Shiko > That was random and… vulgar…
﻿LordThyGod > Marlenus
﻿LordThyGod > So do veterans often steal ore in 30 mil ships?
﻿LordThyGod > bitch ass baiter
﻿Takeda Shiko > zowie
﻿Ebodhisatva > lol
﻿Takeda Shiko > Maybe he’s guilty as charged?
﻿Ebodhisatva > why should he?
﻿Ebodhisatva > he’d rather get blown to pieces
﻿Marlenus > LOL, was busy hauling ore
﻿Ebodhisatva > roflmao
﻿Baron Kalan > /emote sniggers
﻿Ebodhisatva > so you find a nice filled can
﻿Ebodhisatva > and just take it
﻿LordThyGod > coke on a can of quafe and die loser
﻿Marlenus > Was a couple of full cans full, needed multiple trips
﻿Takeda Shiko > Marlenus, that’s just wrong.
﻿Marlenus > Obviously, I disagree
﻿Takeda Shiko > I’m sorry that you think it’s funny
﻿Ebodhisatva > that is indeed like leaving your brand new porsche running while being away
﻿LordThyGod > thats my hard work jerk
﻿Ebodhisatva > man i’d take it for a spin
﻿Marlenus > No, the funny part was that folks think I’d be reading local while I was busy working
﻿Takeda Shiko > Obviously, you’re a jackass, too… but whatever
﻿Marlenus > Salvage is my profession, I take it very seriously
﻿Ebodhisatva > lord, get some secure cans
﻿Ebodhisatva > than you’ll be safe
﻿Ebodhisatva > that is like making sure your new porsche is locked when you leave it
﻿LordThyGod > THIEVING IS YOUR PROFESSION
﻿Takeda Shiko > Salvage is blowing stuff up and using a salvager… ripping people off is stealing. And it reflects on you and your corp.
﻿LordThyGod > you just liek to pick fight dont you?
﻿Takeda Shiko > *Shrugs* Doesn’t matter to me too much though… different strokes and all that.
﻿LordThyGod > want me to fire so you can come back in a BS
﻿Ebodhisatva > it’s even better, you get to kill him
﻿Marlenus > Agree that it reflects on my corp — have you read the corporate description? This is what we do.
﻿Ebodhisatva > he steals and you can kill him!
﻿LordThyGod > I hope you get banned
﻿Ebodhisatva > that is really neat!
﻿LordThyGod > Not when he has 7 months on me
﻿Takeda Shiko > Unfortunately, Lord, this game has a lot of room for griefers.
﻿LordThyGod > gotta pick on the newbs
﻿LordThyGod > what a loser
﻿Ebodhisatva > just kill him!
﻿Ebodhisatva > get some friends and hunt him down!
﻿LordThyGod > a yerar in the game and he cant make money on his own he has to steal ore
﻿Takeda Shiko > What’s sad is he’s doing it in Higher Sec spcae
﻿Takeda Shiko > space*
﻿Takeda Shiko > You expect this in low sec space
﻿Takeda Shiko > “Check me out, I just ripped off a newb! Look at all my SCORDITE!”
﻿Ebodhisatva > ow man, if it is red in my overview, he’s screwed
﻿Ebodhisatva > you can even wardec him
﻿LordThyGod > I know
﻿Ebodhisatva > it’ll cost 50 mill, but it feels soooo good
﻿Ebodhisatva > you can hunt him down the whole frecking week
﻿abissshooter > lol
﻿Ebodhisatva > hell, you can even give privateer alliance 50 mill to do it for you
﻿Dranoel > I’d kick your ass if this were RL.
﻿Ebodhisatva > man, he won’t ever leave station
﻿Ebodhisatva > ever
﻿Dranoel > Nope
﻿Takeda Shiko > Yeah, most jerkies that my old corp put a hit out on just sat in a station and played an alt
﻿Takeda Shiko > wow… Marlenus is the CEO of the corp… of 7 members… why am I not surprised?

So far, so normal. A bunch of smack, I defend myself lightly, that triggers a lot more smack, I can deal with that. But then came the interesting part. Tell me what you think:

﻿Dranoel > Thieves in RL get thier faces stommped in for stealing from me.
﻿Dranoel > Gonna come out now that the timers over?
﻿Dranoel > OR are you gonna keep hiding in your T@ ship
﻿Dranoel > T2 indy just for stealing ore
﻿Takeda Shiko > Baron, the point in question isn’t that he stole ore… it’s that he is a much more powerful veteran character stealing from a newer character in High Sec space… it’s just… tasteless
﻿Dranoel > Thats dedication to being an asshole
﻿Dranoel > Don’t worry, my friends in ISD will make him lose far more isk than he will gain from that ore. :D
﻿
…

﻿Dranoel > aw he came abck!
﻿﻿Dranoel > Gotta run from em cause I’m not in a Osprey?
﻿Marlenus > Right, because a transport ought to stay and fight with a battlecruiser, that would be very smart.
﻿Dranoel > ^ Ore thief
﻿Marlenus > Salvager, if you please
﻿Dranoel > Smart is not stealing from ISD
﻿Dranoel > I don’t please
﻿Marlenus > Smart is not getting banned for threatening to abuse the powers of the volunteers
﻿Dranoel > I hope you die a firey death at the hands of my friends.
﻿Dranoel > I’m not threatening
﻿Dranoel > I’m promising
﻿Dranoel > They volunteered

Now, don’t get me wrong. So far as I know, the ISD volunteers do good work and they don’t have many special powers to abuse, if any. So I consider this an empty threat.

But I do know that CCP Games cannot afford, just now, to have people running around claiming “special connections” and threatening people with the abuse of those connections. The game doesn’t need that.

Or so it seems to me. I filed a petition and attached the logs, just in case.

Back to local, where (if you can believe it) they were still smacking me.

﻿Marlenus > OK, petition filed
﻿Takeda Shiko > Wow… my first petition?
﻿Takeda Shiko > or just against Dranoel?
﻿Marlenus > You’ve done nothing petitionable that I know of
﻿Dranoel > Prolly me but it wont go anywhere.
﻿Takeda Shiko > Well, i DID use a naughty word.
﻿Marlenus > But claiming to be in ISD or to abuse ISD “powers” is banning offense
﻿Takeda Shiko > *blushes*
﻿Marlenus > Lotsa naughty words in the world, I’m a big boy
﻿Takeda Shiko > Fair enough
﻿Dranoel > Telling you that my friends in ISD are on the hunt for you, is not.
﻿Marlenus > But that’s not what you said. No worries, gms will sort it out. I don’t care if anything happens to you, I just want them to be aware that ISD is being used as a threat.
﻿Dranoel > I didn’t threaten you eith them
﻿Dranoel > I warned you
﻿Dranoel > i didn’t make the decision
﻿Marlenus > Not my call

Severe offenses may result in an immediate ban without warning; however, warnings may be given for first time offenses, followed by account suspensions of varying degree and ultimately a permanent ban if a player:

* a. Presents himself as a CCP employee, game master or other customer service representative, or a member of the EVE volunteer program.

And I’d say the claim that “Do you knwo I”m part of ISD?” sounds like presenting himself as a member of the Eve volunteer program.

One final gem from the smack, which continued at length, until a new party entered the system and became curious about it:

﻿Felgor > Did soemoen go boom?
﻿Daloron > nope someone did steal
﻿Marlenus > No, but some jettisoned ore went home to a hangar the mining ship never left from.
﻿Daloron > from a newb
﻿Takeda Shiko > I don’t think so, but marlenus ripped someone off.
﻿Marlenus > Mining barge does not equal newb I wouldn’t think.
﻿Felgor > Sounds like Marlenus will soon have a bounty on his head :P
﻿Takeda Shiko > psh… bounties are just collected by a buddy
﻿Dranoel > Brought a Badger II JUST to steal form me
﻿Marlenus > No point in salvaging jettisoned ore in a small ship.
﻿Raest > that’s the spirit
﻿Dranoel > If I had fired, he gets 15 mins to attack me in w/e ship he wants
﻿Marlenus > Ya gotta move that stuff in industrial quantities if you want to see a decent profit.
﻿Dranoel > I had planned on it but you stole it befor ei Could
﻿Dranoel > I was there in my BADGER II EMPTING THE CAN WHEN YOU STOELL IT!

So many comebacks, but I was laughing too hard to type. So I let it drop with a LOL, and moved on.